Hello folks. As i surfed on the net, i visited a sight called Art.com A question popped down in my head. This company offer prints from a gigantic amount of the most famous artists.How in the &%/() have they got this copyrights?feks: picasso, monet, van gogh, klimt, warhole, dali, adams, da vinci, just to mention som few...

What did they pay to get this rights? They seems to get about anyone in there "portfolio"

i am jalous, and also i am considering starting a new savings account to buy this copyrights, but what will it cost me:-)?Pardon my English writing! :-)

Copyright on an Old Master is a complex thing. There are time limits and a painting by daVinci such as the Mona Lisa is certainly is out of copyright. But if the Louvre makes a photograph of that same painting and publishes it, the photograph itself is covered by a new copyright and cannot be reproduced without permission.

It's actually not an issue of copyright but access...once in the public domain, nobody can claim copyright of an image in the public domain. The owners of the public domain artwork can limit access to the original artwork however. I think that Steve maybe misunderstanding the copyright of the original with the copyright of a reproduction. If the Louvre reproduces the image in a book or poster, that book or poster can and does indeed get it's own discrete copyright. So, copying the image of Mona Lisa from a book or poster would be a violation of that book or poster.

That's where the Louvre's control over access to the original comes into play. If you take a camera into the Louvre and photograph it, your image would not be under the control of the Louvre. You could do anything you would want to with that image. Of course, museums make doing that sort of difficult...most don't allow any sort of lighting like flash, not the use of tripods, so getting a really good capture of the Mona Lisa would be difficult...

In the case of the Art Institute here in Chicago, there are limits to what a photographer can and can't do. For most things, photos are allowed but no lighting or tripods. Many things are rather dimly lit. Artwork whose artist is alive and still under the artist's control, the museum will not allow photos in those sections.

So, bottom line, don't confuse copyright with access control. If you find a reproduction of a public domain image that is in the public domain (such as a wiki image) you can pretty much do whatever you want–assuming the qulity of the image is suitable–that's really the hard part.

Thank you for taking me a little bit serious guys:-) This is what i am talking about. As i am really hopeless in reading the technical lawstuff, i thought it might be easyer for me to understand this issues, if someone could tell it to me, in normal writing. What i would like, is a searchable webpage that had registred the pieces that was alowed to print

I have a book with the amazing drawings by Norman Rockwell. I would love to scan some of this images because they are truly amazing and i think they would look very nice printed, but this would be a very obvious violation, so of course a "nono".

One of the things that has strucked me, is that i often see companyes selling copyes of famous masterpieces, like for example The creation of Adam, by Michelangelo and many others...I think it is imported from China, often with frame, and even quite expensive... How can this be...I have top of the line epson big ones, so the capability is there, but i am not interested to break the law, for this:-)

I can quote some facts from my country, Australia. They are similar generally but time limits differ. Here in Oz for images, the originator of the image must have died before 1958 for copyright to have lapsed into public domain. That time period is longer in the US.

In most western countries there is usually a central body that manages copyright on behalf of artists, be they painters, photographers, or whatever. Quite often you will pay 10% of your sale price for the use of an image as, or in, a poster for example, and these organizations often have high quality scans for you to use.

There are many image sellers on the web that just use a museum scan from, say, wherever they see it. They get away with it because it's almost impossible to make the claim as to who took the photo. Some online galleries offer use of the images they have, at a price that seems reasonable given the size of their collection, see: http://www.artrenewal.org/pages/arc_image_use.php

You my freely photograph and copy a Monet if you have the original in front of you. But even though he's been dead for many years, photos others have taken of his works belong to them, until they die and the requisite time has passed.

I have a book with the amazing drawings by Norman Rockwell. I would love to scan some of this images because they are truly amazing and i think they would look very nice printed, but this would be a very obvious violation, so of course a "nono".

(snip)

The effect of copyright law in every country is different, largely because of what is considered "fair use" is often set by courts and generally not by laws issued by the national legislatures.

In the US, if you copy and print public domain image you find on Wiki Commons, you are generally within the law. But if you scan a public domain image from a copyrighted book or magazine, you are infringing the copyright of the book or magazine; because you have copied part of their work, not the public domain portion in isolation.

My advice is that Norman Rockwell prints can be had from any number of vendors, and higher quality than one could get from scanning a litho reproduction in a book. So buy what you want from an authorized reseller and you need not concern yourself with infringing copyright.

Most print resellers tell you nothing about what repro rights they have. As a very famous artist told us when we contacted them to pay a rights fee, "don't bother, every man and his dog is printing and selling our stuff for free."

I would still recommend going to the rights management body in your country, buy the right and they can often point you to a good scan.

I have a book with the amazing drawings by Norman Rockwell. I would love to scan some of this images because they are truly amazing and i think they would look very nice printed, but this would be a very obvious violation, so of course a "nono". ..

I am not a lawyer but I believe that scanning those images from a book that you own in order to print a copy for your own private use, to hang on your own wall for example, would be considered fair use. It would be like recording a TV program on your PVR to watch later than its actual airtime or ripping a copy of some music off a CD into your iPod to take with you jogging. At least under current US and Canadian law such uses of copyrighted works are permissible. But subsequent distribution of those copies, selling them or giving them to others as gifts, or publishing the scans such as using them on a website, etc, would clearly be an infringement.

There is a company in my building that sells large prints of iconic rock and roll images. Same question came to my mind. How the hell are they getting permission to sell these things? Its all way to current to be anywhere near in the public domain.

The effect of copyright law in every country is different, largely because of what is considered "fair use" is often set by courts and generally not by laws issued by the national legislatures.

In the US, if you copy and print public domain image you find on Wiki Commons, you are generally within the law. But if you scan a public domain image from a copyrighted book or magazine, you are infringing the copyright of the book or magazine; because you have copied part of their work, not the public domain portion in isolation.

My advice is that Norman Rockwell prints can be had from any number of vendors, and higher quality than one could get from scanning a litho reproduction in a book. So buy what you want from an authorized reseller and you need not concern yourself with infringing copyright.

I'm a copyright holder myself, with published matter out there.

Have any of you put anything on Wiki Commons? I was giving it a try with my lesser works. What do you think? Any problems down the road that you can think of?

I'm not into it for the $ end of it, just preservation. That is my goal.

My main portfolio I solicit museums and university art galleries to doante works to. I wont put much or any of this work on the WC. I think it would turn off the museums. They are hard enuf to get in as it is.